Long slow days of recovery, all for the sake of gaining back the ability to do a full days worth of output. meeting the rigors of the employment world. Up until this personal challenge, I always admired the notion of battling against our challenges and overcoming victorious. It has such a ring of nobility to it to imagine the scene as a soldier in a battle with a sword and shield, swinging powerfully and accurately, taking down mostly hapless foes who flail their sword and don’t have the affect they were hoping for because of your skill and experience. Kind of like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, or Mel Gibson playing William Wallace in Braveheart. Yes their battle is fierce, but they overcome, with blood dripping down their face and their lungs heaving great gasps of air as they come to the end of the fight and look around to survey the ultimate disaster they perpetrated on their enemy.

The scene changes quite a bit if it is a man in a dark room getting punched in the head and he can’t quite figure out which direction it’s coming from. I don’t know of any skill or weaponry that would be successful against that kind of fight. It’s all pretty one sided. Pretty much have to take your head shots and see if you still end up on your feet. It’s easy to imagine the fighter sitting in the dark and at least feeling sorry for themselves in silence if not sobbing and crying out for some sort of justice in the fight. Okay, I’ll admit it… there isn’t much sobbing and crying out in my case, but there is a temptation to feel sorry for myself and to wonder about justice. I have to make that a short lived idea, because another hit is coming, I just know it. There was a joke told at our wedding reception about me having half a mind to get married, and apparently that’s all it took. I’m used to bulling through a varied bunch of physical pains to accomplish life, but this kind of battle is all in my head. And I’m doing it with only a portion of my mind.

First of all, it was my brain that got injured, so while it is healing, I still need what little was there in the first place to function on a moment to moment basis for all the regular stuff that needs to happen. Add to all of this the fact that perseverance is a mental battle, and that’s what I need to overcome the small physical pains and moreso the unruly body that is no longer doing what I want it to. As if there isn’t enough for my poor little brain to do with all this, learning about what is going on in there is essential to keep this recovery going at the pace that it has been. On some days I pat myself on the back for being able to pull off the largest amount of focus I have ever had on any one topic or task at a time. On other days, I spend the bulk of my time collecting tiny little fragments of that same focus from the stupid little tasks where I left them as I abandon one thing after another in the state of “blown mind”. Of course along the way I think I am getting so much done. But looking back it seems like there is next to nothing to show for.

There is so much appeal to me right now to have a simple mundane job doing a repetitive task all day every day. I’m sure that I would end up making it look like Laverne and Shirley on the bottling line, daydreaming as the task at hand whips by at an unaltered pace. On the other hand, maybe it’s my desire and practice to keep my mind active that keeps me from going stark raving mad. I guess I’ll never know, and only you poor suckers will ever be able to tell whether I’ve gone mad or not. Daily gains in movement and strength are enough to distract me now. I’ll just busy myself with mouse moves and that will have to be okay.

It’s to the point where there feels like there is always so much that I want to say, but then when I actually get to writing it, I fail to be able to put the sentences together for this blog. Without having the luxury of muttering to myself all day long on the jobsite or maybe say the odd thing to a person working on the same site, I have to be content with keeping that stuff to myself. So the blogging takes the place of real life interaction. Thanks for listening.